


The Taking

by Beguile



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Gen, Gore, Hurt, Major Character Injury, Obsession, Sadism, Torture, Twisted Comfort, Twisted Praise, Unhappy Ending, Violence, graphic depictions of injuries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-11
Updated: 2018-11-11
Packaged: 2019-08-22 04:38:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16590968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beguile/pseuds/Beguile
Summary: Dex decides to keep Matt.





	The Taking

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: the characters and concepts in this story are the property of Marvel and their related affiliates. This is an amateur writing effort meant for entertainment purposes only.
> 
> Another piece I wrote for Whumptober. The prompt was tortured, and I was struck by the image in one of the trailers of Dex in the Daredevil suit booting Matt in the face during their fight at the Bulletin. My mind filled in the blanks as to what might happen after that, resulting in this little ditty. 
> 
> Since this was written before the new season dropped, I didn’t realize that Dex’s sociopathy was managed for the first few episodes. Given how he progresses during the season, this represents a significant escalation on his part. As a result, I haven’t contextualized this scene at all. This could just as easily be set post-s3 as it could be an AU for “Aftermath.” I'll let your imaginations fill in the blanks for yourself. 
> 
> Readers, lovely Readers, please, enjoy!

* * *

 

The Taking

                Sound comes back first, as it always does. Groans echoing across the stone floor, collecting in corners like dust clouds; his own ragged wheezing puddling under his mouth and cheek and blood-matted hair. Matt manages to pick up a few rumbles of his heartbeat before the pain unfurls inside him like a storm. Humidity thick in his face where his eyes have swollen shut, where his broken cheeks pound, the skin so tight it splits around them. Lightning strikes at his shattered knee, his twisted fingers, his fractured wrist; a conglomeration of bruising provides cloud cover over the dull throb of his organs. Matt reels through the vocabulary – bruised, ruptured, bleeding internally. He doesn’t say it won’t be long now because it has been long now. It has been a lifetime since he woke here without pain, a lifetime since he knew anything but pain, a lifetime since he was anything other than pain.

               The door opens on squeaky hinges. Matt draws another breath, waiting for the starting kick, the punch, the blow; he’s learned not to expect anything. Dex likes to surprise him, and Matt decided to allow Dex that muck. The element of surprise seems a small sacrifice considering the other concessions he hasn’t made. Hard to tell what Dex feels when he leaves the room, but there’s anger when he’s with Matt, anger and rage and disgust and desperation, so he can’t possibly be getting what he wants. Matt doesn’t beg, he doesn’t plead; he’s never prayed. His injuries are his rosary beads now, and he counts them the way he used to count Hail Mary-s while Dex unleashes hell upon him. Once in a while he will allow himself the prayers of St. Bridget, but only so he can cynically wait for the day when his own agony fades for the agony of crucifixion.

               Today is strange. Today, Dex is quiet, and his hands are full, and Matt wonders what sort of fun Dex has planned. He tries to ask, but the words get lost in a bloody cough. They spill out through his missing teeth and cracked lips, spattering across the floor.

               A hand comes to his shoulder; something wet runs across his face. Matt bucks back with a yelp, and finds his head cradled in Dex’s hands, finds the towel moving in long strokes over his battered skin.

               Dex hushes him. Lays his head back down, this time onto something plush. Another towel. Matt cant smell anything through his broken nose, but he’s aware that Dex’s items smell different, that they change the sick quality of the air in the room to something sweet. Dex’s actions, too, send soft spirals of air roving over Matt’s skin. His sensitivity’s gone thanks to the bruising, but the absence of brutality registers with its own horrific weight.

               After his face, Matt’s neck is wiped down, his chest, his arms; then his hips, his legs. Wrappings snap and crinkle; ointments are applied, then dressings. Matt moans and scrambles away from every touch, the softness of them alarming, more alarming than everything else Dex has done. “What is this…? What…?” Dex shushes him again, gives Matt a small drink of water or a soft touch to one of the few parts that isn’t bruised or battered; one of those small, fragile parts that can still feel tenderness and mercy; the part that stupidly sees violence withheld as kindness and doesn’t recognize that the man who taught it that is the one withholding the violence.

               Matt chokes back sobs and snot and blood as Dex unfolds a blanket over him, one that doesn’t hurt, it’s too soft to hurt; one that warms him against the chill he didn’t even know he’d had. Dex reaches back to his head and it hurts, it hurts wherever Dex touches, but it’s a pain from him, because of him, because of Dex has done, not from what Dex is doing.

               Dex presses a cup to his lips. “No,” Matt recoils, and again, there’s that hushing followed by sweet-natured, almost paternalistic, “You need to eat something, Matthew.” And the cup is back, and Dex’s hands are so insistent, and Matt just wants it to stop. He takes a sip and doesn’t give himself a chance to not taste it before he spits it at Dex.

               He waits for the blow. It comes in the form of the damp towel over his face. Dex’s whisper washes over his features with the same kind of gentleness. His heart doesn’t flinch or waver, the very picture of saint-like patience. Matt screws his face up tight and he won’t, _he won’t_ , but Dex holds him like a sick child until his reserves give out, until he’s crying and hurting and _hating_ , hating this, but he doesn’t spit out the next sip of soup he’s given. “Good boy,” Dex says, giving him another.

               The heat calms him, and Matt hates that too, but he just can’t. He doesn’t have the strength. He lies there, languishing, letting Dex do what he will, telling himself that this is only happening by choice. He, Matt, is choosing to let Dex do this, just like he chose to let Dex take him and continues to choose to be kept rather than get away.

               Dex picks up his right hand and slowly puts Matt’s fingers back into alignment, splinting them and bandaging them and offering encouragement. “That’s it, Matthew. Almost done, Matthew. You’re doing so well, Matthew.”

               Matt comes back to himself, pain calling him out from under the drowse. “What do you want?” he asks. He just wants to know so that he can not give it, whatever it is.

               “You haven’t figured it out?” Dex asks, finally – mercifully – sounding like his old self. But then that self is gone, replaced with the sweet, caring Dex, the scarier Dex. “Why, Matthew, I want you to hurt.”

               And try as Matt might to deny him, Dex resumes straightening fingers, resumes his praise – “Good boy, Matthew” – taking what he wants again and again and again. 

* * *

 

Happy Reading…?


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